Stratford council sinks 'horseshoe crab law' -- for now

Published 6:40 pm, Friday, September 4, 2009

STRATFORD -- The horseshoe crab, which has been quietly going about its business for millions of years, is stirring up a storm in Stratford.

A few weeks ago, the Town Council put a new law on the books to protect the ancient helmet-shelled creature.

But the regulation was aimed not at poachers, but rather at a Sacred Heart University research effort on the ancient marine animals, which involves tagging the animals during mating season.

The council, at its most recent meeting, had second thoughts about the measure, and sent the new law back to its Ordinance Committee.

The new regulation had pitted the small local group, Protect Your Environment, against a long-running tagging effort organized by an SHU professor. Marcia Stewart, PYE's leader, said the tagging interrupted the horseshoe crab's breeding routines. But SHU biology assistant professor Jennifer Mattei maintains the creatures shrug off the federally approved tags, which provide critical data on the animal's habits.

Furthermore, the tagging project has given thousands of grade school and high school students a chance to participate in a "hands-on" science project, she said. About 180 school classrooms get involved in the tagging every year.

The vast majority of tagged horseshoe crabs receive a small, plastic "cinch tag" that gives the finder the phone number to call, as well as a serial number.

A few receive more expensive sonar tags, which allow the crab to be tracked for about 14 months, until the batteries run down.

"We were issued these tags from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service," said Mattei. "If they thought that the tags harmed the animals any way whatsoever, they would not use them. They're used by biologists up and down the East Coast."

Stewart, however, said, "If I had my way," there wouldn't be any tagging of horseshoe crabs. "When you remove the male while he is fertilizing the eggs, you're disturbing them," she said.

"How can it be good for the species when you bother them while they're breeding?" Stewart added, noting the similarities between horseshoe crab and human mating rituals. "There's not a male in the world who would put up with getting separated from his female while he's fertilizing her eggs!"

The town has prohibited the taking of horseshoe crabs for commercial use since 1984. The new, short-lived ordinance expanded that restriction to tagging efforts for research.

Now that will be reviewed by the Ordinance Committee, and possibly modified and voted on again by the council, according to Councilwoman Amy J. Wanamaker, D-6.

"There's absolutely no data to indicate that the tagging interrupts breeding," Mattei said. "And the information that we've gotten back has been very important in understanding the structure of the population in Long Island Sound," she said.

"For example, we found out that they actually cross Long Island Sound from one side to the other on occasion," Mattei said. "We also now know that they don't visit the same stretch of beach every mating season, but rather will lay eggs on several different beaches during their lifetimes. The fact that they can cross the Sound is something that we didn't know before. They also can travel far east and west ---- from Norwalk to New Haven."

She said that this means that communities along the Sound will have to redouble their efforts to protect the animals, which can't reproduce until they're a decade old. This means that if females die prematurely ---- because they visited the "wrong" beach, for example ---- the crabs' numbers will decline sharply, she said. "We'll need to conserve larger areas for them."

About 10 to 15 percent of the tagged horseshoe crabs are eventually found. The creatures are actually not crabs, they're far more closely related to arachnids ---- spiders, tics, mites and the like. They've been around for about 300 million years ---- more than twice the age of even the Atlantic Ocean.

"We no longer see them as small, separate populations that are wedded to the same beach," she said.

The SHU tagging effort is called Project Limulus, after the horseshoe crab's Latin name, Limulus polyphemus. Established in 2003, the project operates in the waters of Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

"We don't really need to tag at the Stratford beaches, because we tag all over," Mattei said. "But it's the Stratford school teachers who were most affected by this ordinance -- they're more upset about this then we are."